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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

What your article should blame is the teacher, not the test! There's absolutely nothing wrong with testing, or the test itself. The problem is the teacher who teaches solely to the test! And parents/students who take comfort in knowing that "passing" level 2 means the student has the "ability" of level 2.

If the teacher can't find more pieces to teach than the 3 required pieces per year, then the teacher is ill-equipped to teach and should not be teaching at all.

I took piano lessons for 14 years (from age 3 through age 17). My piano teacher was amazing, and taught a popular method vs. the typical RCM (Royal Conservatory in Canada). This was great. I learned many skills, including theory, playing by ear, and playing chord charts (or comping as some call it).

Fast forward to later life. I'd love to begin teaching piano lessons. I've taught music lessons in another city (keyboard, guitar, drums) in a less formal setting (think "School of Rock"), and I feel I would be an excellent teacher. Unfortunately, because I never took exams, and didn't do a music degree, this option isn't as open to me as an independant teacher.

The first question everyone asks is "What grade RCM did you take?" One area piano teacher actually said that all those lessons were "wasted". Of course, I disagree, but I do wish I had an external validation of the level of piano performance that I had achieved. I wouldn't recommend to "younger me" to do an exam every year, but select milestones (grades 3, 6, 8) would have been a great addition.

Speaking as a college teacher in California, I can say that we DO look at whether or not a student has participated in CM and, if so, to what level. It gives us a bit of a ready profile of what theory and technique have been covered and that they have had exposure to a historical swath of literature.

I have, in the last 15 years, occasionally come across a student who has spent the entire year learning only the CM pieces, but that is a rare case. As a CM evaluator, I find most of the students to be pretty well-rounded.

How effective exams are has everything to do with the attitudes of the teacher, the parent and the student. They have to be a team if anything in piano study is to be worthwhile.

My piano teacher from 3-18 was *strongly* against exams, from the point of view that you end up spending a lot of time polishing 3-5 pieces, when you could have worked on 20-50 pieces in the same time, not polishing, but working on sightreading (which isn't going to progress significantly working on 3-5 pieces for 6-12 months) and getting a feel for different styles and composers.

Unfortunately though, some students wouldn't progress at all if they didn't have exams to work towards. That deadline is the only thing that can get them to the piano away from lessons. Kids (and parents!) also like to compete against one another, and be able to say what grade they have accomplished.

Personally I believe in a 50/50 approach. Playing lots of pieces that can be learnt in 1-3 weeks as well as some harder ones, but also working towards an exam for about 3 months once per year, to give a marker of where we're at and something to work towards.

It's also largely a matter of temperament. If your child is competitive or loves to perform they may get a lot of fulfillment from doing exams. If they love playing piano without needing external motivation than they might be better off without them.

I'm with Beth - totally agree that it's really about the student and what will be best for him/her.

I have just posted on another thread about this. I still sometimes struggle with Grade 3 piece even though I have taken and got my exam. The way I have been working so far with my teacher is this.........

Tell teacher i want to do exams

Teacher agrees and we get booksWork on pieces,scale etc

Sit the exam

When we wait for results we work on one or two pieces at that level

When the results come through we look at them and I usually pass

We then immediately get the books reuired for the next Grade and start working on the next Grade as soon as possible.

At no time does the teacher ask me if I feel I am completely confident playing Grade 3 pieces and suggesting that unless and until I am, we will not move forward to Grade 4. Why is teacher heck bent on moving forwards like this? What is the teacher gaining out of moving a student forward so fast? Is it for self gratification so that the teacher can say all my students pass their exams so the teacher gets a pat on the back? My music school has been noted as 100% pass rate for exams so any parent knowing that would send their child to the school for lessons, because after all, no student fails an exam. I have not failed an exam, but I can tell you that I do not feel confident picking up any piece of Grade 3 material and sitting down and playing it and doing it fluently in a couple of days. That is where REAL learning comes..NOT from having a suitcase full of exam certificates where all you have done is cram like blazes for the exam so you pass and anyone who has had no musical training or doesn't know the first thing about learning music will be amazed and think you are a wonderful pianist.

On another note...when I got the examiners sheet from my exam, he noted down that one of my exam pieces sounded rather dry because I had not used the pedal. The piece did not require a pedal, there was no pedalling in the score so it was not used. I queried this with the head of my music school and said we should complain but he said it is not worth it. Is he correct or should I complain myself. The other thing I queried is that when I did my aural and had to sing echo the examiner said I sang three wrong notes and I know I did not. My teacher told me I can sing on the right note so the head of my school said perhaps the acoustics were not right in the exam venue so that it sounded wrong when in fact it was right. Again, he did not want to take this up with anyone as a complaint. Why should I be given lower markings for not using pedal when no pedal was required and for not singing the echo right when I know full well it WAS. I wanted my school to go back for clarification as to why the examiner made these comments, but they are not prepared to do so. Surely as I took the exam and feel I have been unfairly marked in those areas, is it not my right to get reasons why the examiner said what he said? Nobody should just accept what someone says if they feel it is unfair.

I think that perhaps it is seriously time to find another music school and teachers.

My daughter has tests (not music) with a panel of judges. Each judge writes comments and gives a score for each thing she does. We would never argue with a judge. They are professionals and have nothing to gain or lose by the scores they issue. Sometimes a judge gives a high score and another gives a low score for the exact same task. They are trained and have 30+ years experience but they still have things that they are aware of individually. So we say thank you respectfully and move on. If we don't like a score or in a competition didn't like the outcome, we never bad mouth the judges. For whatever reason they wanted something different.

I have just posted on another thread about this. I still sometimes struggle with Grade 3 piece even though I have taken and got my exam. The way I have been working so far with my teacher is this.........

Tell teacher i want to do exams

Teacher agrees and we get booksWork on pieces,scale etc

Sit the exam

Now in regards to your questions in the other thread - the first thing here is that you have told your teacher the goal of doing exams. As a main goal this is aiming for something that is secondary and somewhat beside the point. The main point of music lessons is learning to play music on an instrument. Exams are a means of assessing whether the learning is on track, seeing what needs to be strengthened etc. When the assessment becomes the main goal, and the learning tasks are geared toward the assessment then it's all upside down.

A good idea is to figure what you want to learn. Is it to play the instrument well? To be able to dash off your favorite tunes in a general manner? To be able to improvise, or play jazz? These are real goals. Then you tell a prospective teacher these goals, and ask that teacher to do whatever s/he thinks best to help you reach those goals, and cooperate. Since teaching goes toward goals, the results will reflect the goals.

It appears now that your teacher did exactly what you asked for: prepare for exams. The logical order for exam-oriented lessons is that once you pass the exams for one grade, you go on to the next grade. That's what's happening.

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I have not failed an exam, but I can tell you that I do not feel confident picking up any piece of Grade 3 material and sitting down and playing it and doing it fluently in a couple of days.

You have some wrong ideas here. But

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That is where REAL learning comes..NOT from having a suitcase full of exam certificates where all you have done is cram like blazes for the exam so you pass

Correct. You set the wrong goal.

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On another note...when I got the examiners sheet from my exam, he noted down that one of my exam pieces sounded rather dry because I had not used the pedal. The piece did not require a pedal, there was no pedaling in the score so it was not used.

There are a couple of things to consider here. Some of the things you can be learning in piano lessons are elements of musicianship - how to think and act like a musician. That goes beyond what you do to pass exams, and personally I find this much more interesting as a student. Playing music goes beyond following the instructions written in the score. The musician will use knowledge about music and about the instrument and his ear to make decisions which will make the music sound good. A teacher who passes these things on gives a treasure. A judge who passes these things on is also giving a treasure which you can use.

If you aim to get high grades in an exam then you are aiming for an unimportant thing. If you look at these exams differently, as a learning opportunity then it is a rich thing. For example, with this pedal, if your teacher is up to it, then this could turn into an exploration and a discussion. "How can this music be made to sound better? If I had the skills, what might I do with it? Is it in fact dry? What makes music "dry"? What kinds of things make a piece come alive?" There are many things you could do with a comment like that.

In the uk there is an obsession with exams and testing and most students will follow the ABRSM syllabus. Of course there are those who study piano simply to acquire certificates and learning to play is secondary. This attitude is anti-piano and unfortunately is often driven by pushy parents who want their kids to achieve higher grades than their class mates.

It isn't the test that's at fault though. For many these exams provide motivation and recognition of success. I think the syllabus is pretty well balanced on the whole and ensures that students play a varied repertoire as well as working on technique, sight reading and aural skills. You don't have to play nothing but three exam pieces for a whole year. That's down to th teacher and student. There are nine pieces in each book as well as another nine alternatives. Then there is plenty more repertoire out there to play as well. So it's perfectly possible to learn lots of pieces in a short space of time, then take the exam using just three set pieces.

Those students who get stuck on three pieces for a whole year simply don't want to learn piano. If you give them forty other pieces they will still do the square root of bugger all!

The exams themselves are not at fault; it's just that the desire for the exams' marks are often overshadowing the desire to learn more music these days.

There are different types of motivation, and when you use the exam as an endpoint, or reward, then the child will be motivated for the reward itself, and not the music.

Generally, once a piece is played for an exam (i.e. prepped excessively months before), it's 'dead' and the student won't want to touch it for months afterwards. That's extrinsic motivation, and that's not what we want.